Cruise ships for tourism and vacation have become increasingly popular over the last two decades. In 2014, the cruise industry estimated that 22.1 million passengers traveled by cruise ship globally—a four percent increase over 2013's previous high of 21.3 million. Coupled with an annual occupancy percentage again exceeding 100 percent, this passenger growth shows sustained consumer interest in cruising and an industry where demand continues to outstrip supply. Cruise lines released an additional 15 full service cruise ships in 2014, but they also enhanced demand by establishing and increasing their presence in international ports-of-call.
The vast number of these passengers enjoy a fun filled, vacation without incident. For a very small fraction of these passengers, however, the experience ends in tragedy. It is estimated that over two hundred incidents of “man overboard” has occurred since the year 2000, where a passenger jumps, falls, or by other nefarious means introduced into the cold sea below. Most ships are equipped with rescue equipment, and some ships are also equipped with man overboard (“MOB) detection equipment, but most systems are either ineffective or incapable of quickly and accurately determining a true MOB occurrence from the numerous false alarms that occur.
Thus, the art desperately needs an improved surveillance and early detection system that signals to the bridge of a ship when a person falls overboard from a commercial, military or cruise ship. When dealing with person overboard scenarios there are few moments to spare in stopping the vessel, turning the propulsion machinery away from the person overboard before a true catastrophe at sea occurs, and initiating a rescue. Depending on environment and extraneous circumstances, a crew may only have moments to even detect the person overboard and initiate rescue before it is too late. To work effectively each major component in the system must work in tandem with one another to provide the fast response times such that crew members can appropriately respond to the emergency occurring within a prescribed perimeter that surrounds the vessel.
Until now solving the person overboard problem had not yielded satisfactory solutions, in part because the sensors required to detect an event that occurred over a span of 180 degrees in close proximity to the sensor head and thereafter accompanied by the means to capture the event itself were unavailable. A significant reason why a satisfactory solution has not been found is that the detection of a relatively small object (e.g., size of a baby) falling from a ship, relative to a sensing and detection mechanism, has a very high angular rate of change. On the other hand the recording of such object must precede its detection and encompass the entire trajectory of the object from the point of departure from the ship until it contacts the water. The industry needs a solution where an integrated system has the requisite sensitivity, accuracy of positioning and low cost.
The prior art has attempted to solve this problem with mixed results. U.S. Pat. No. 8,384,780 to Frank et al. discloses a Man Overboard System that uses cameras to constantly monitor the perimeter of a vessel. The vessel includes a plurality of image capture components coupled to the vessel to capture infrared images around at least a substantial portion of a perimeter of the watercraft, and stores the image in a memory. The images are processed by a computer, and an alarm is activated if the man overboard condition occurs. Frank's Near Infrared (NIR) cameras relies on the non-thermal wavelength spectrum between 700 nm-1 mm. It has been found that using NIR cameras do not have the requisite accuracy to consistently detect images the size of babies or small children, and so it is not an optimal solution to the problem.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,659,432 to Alicea-Ibern et al. teaches a security system for automatically detecting and signaling the event of a person falling overboard from a vessel into a body of water. The system requires that passengers wear a radio frequency identification (RFID) tag, and places one or more RFID readers placed surrounding the hull of the vessel. The RFID readers detect when an RFID tag enters the water, and sounds an alarm while pulling up information on the passenger associated with the specific RFID tag. When a person who is wearing the RFID tag falls overboard, he or she would inevitably pass through one or more of the RFID readers placed surrounding the hull of the vessel. The control unit records the time and location of the event, and activates an alarm system for facilitating the rescue of the person. However, if a passenger removes the RFID tag, or the reader fails to detect the tag, the system is inoperative. Thus, this is also not an optimal solution.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,749,635 to Högasten et al. discloses an infrared camera system and methods for dual sensor applications to detect a man overboard condition. In one embodiment, the system comprises an image capture component having a visible light sensor to capture visible light images and an infrared sensor to capture infrared images. The system comprises a first control component adapted to provide a plurality of selectable processing modes to a user, wherein the plurality of selectable processing modes includes a visible light only mode, infrared only mode, and a combined visible-infrared mode. The system comprises a processing component adapted to receive the generated control signal from the control component, process the captured visible light images and the captured infrared images according to the user selected processing mode, and generate processed images based on the processing mode selected by the user. This patent adds the visible light spectrum, 380-750 nm, but still includes the drawbacks of the Frank patent discussed above. This approach has been proven to have create numerous false alarms and has been rejected by the industry.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,810,436 to Zagami et al. discloses a system for detecting the presence of a person overboard by scanning the area 180 degrees in azimuth utilizing a laser beam. The system detects the reflection of a beam, and plays back a video recording of the trajectory of the person, wherein the area above and below the perimeter of an area to scan is continuously video recorded and wherein upon detecting the target, one or more of audio and visual alarms alert that crew, and wherein an alarm with location is sent to PDA system with GPS coordinates, time, and date. Zagami uses a visible spectrum camera, and its laser scanners operate in a 180 degree arc. Visible light cameras do not provide visual in the evening hours due to the lack of visible light, thus not providing visual confirmation of a man overboard event.
U.S. Pat. No. 9,106,810 to Hadsall, Sr. discloses a man overboard detection system that includes cameras positioned around a perimeter of a vessel. The system analyzes video from the cameras to detect a falling object from the vessel and records a geolocation of the vessel at a time of falling of the object. The system applies environmental readings (wind, wave currents, etc.) to evolve a recovery location for the falling object from the time of falling to a present time.
U.S. Pat. No. 9,208,673 to Grignan et al. discloses a monitoring system for a periphery of a vessel comprises a monitoring module that are microwave or radar to detect falling objects around the vessel. A detector has an imaging resolution that prevents conclusive visual identification by a human operator of the nature of the body. The monitoring module also comprises a video capture apparatus arranged to provide video data. The system also comprises a, monitoring station apparatus arranged to receive data from the monitoring module. In response to detection of the passage of the body by the detection system, the monitoring station enables the operator to review the video data. The video data enables the operator to identify readily the nature of the body detected and thereby to provide confirmatory visual evidence when the body is human.
U.S. Publication No. 2013/0214942 to Joss discloses a system for detecting a man overboard event, including tracking and recovery used for analyzing conditions on and/or around a ship or vessel located on a body or water. The man overboard detection, tracking and recovery system generally includes the ship, members of the ship, transmitting device, a ship based man overboard detection system, a man overboard (when in the detection, tracking and recovery mode), and an overhead receiving and communication system. The man overboard detection, tracking and recovery system may also include a marking/tracking device, and/or a recovery craft.
The prior art systems all lack a comprehensive, robust solution for surveillance, detection, and tracking of a MOB occurrence in daylight or evening, that can also apply computer analytics (learning) of the ships environment and structure to progressively improve detection. The present invention overcomes this shortcomings and drawbacks of the prior art systems.